Thursday, 24 March 2011

Sculpting bases for Micropanzer figures

Decking Bases

My order from Micropanzer arrived during the week and I'm very pleased with the figures. Lots of character, HUGE blocky guns (I love them) and a different look to the other minis in my collection.
In my 'favorite human soldiers' catagory, they are a close second to the UNSC figures from GZG.

I have been too busy to paint or set up my work area at all lately, but I have a few minutes here and there during the day so I've been grappling with the problem of basing figures for starship interiors.

I bit the bullet and decided that I'd just have to make a different base style for interior games. If this meant I had to buy some of my favorite minis again then so be it.. I'll do a better paint job the second time anyway.

I initially decided to sculpt a single universal spaceship interior base then mold it off using instant Mold. The I decided that I was going to have to do putty work to blend the mini into the cast base anyway.. And I didn't have any instant mold. So I just got to work individually adding bits f green stuff to the bases when I had a spare minute.

The Base in the middle was the original, and the other two were experiments in faster sculpting. I think the one on the right looks the worst in the photo, but a bit of shaving and it will come up OK when painted.

Looking at the results, the details are far too soft for my liking. I think the next step is to get some proper thin metal rod and plasticard, maybe some plastic diamond plate sheet, and build proper masters. Some good lessons learned though.. Don't bother trying to sculpt nice sharp corners on the bases.. Cut the putty after it's cured for example.

I have ordered some Oyumaru from Amazon.co.uk (much cheaper than getting Instant Mold form OS.. And it's exactly the same stuff) am considering some ProCreate putty and have visions of a new era of indoor spaceship basing.

What am I going to do with all this spaceship based stuff? I'm going to play some of this game:

It's got really great reviews, has solo play rules (woooo!) and can be played out of the box (bag actually) with 15mm minis. It was also written by Chris Taylor.. You know, from a little PC game called "Fallout"?

Full review and plans for pimping out my set when it arrives. (It shipped yesterday so I'm excitedly watching the post again).

It just occurred to me I *could* build a little "factory ruins" board with dry-brushed sand and static grass clumps.. making all my existing minis usable.. Oh well. Project no. 2,026 I guess.

Good job there! As for texturing the bases - you may want to try using blister packaging from pills (cheap diamond treadplate), plastic canvas ('granny grating') and pushing ProCreate against bottle tops' sides etc. All of these work well.

Olive Oil and a Needle File can make Procreate mixed 50/50 0r 40/60 (Harder with more white than black) as smooth as a Babies Butt.Greenstuff is prown to tear if you do this to much.I ONLY Use Procreate.

Great- just done this myself for a spaceship crew!If you mix a little super sculpey into the gs (1:8) it breaks the stickiness of the putty down and reduces the memory - so the sharp corners do not round off. The trade off is it's spongier than gs.I use brownstuff mixed with greenstuff and a touch of sculpey to do my hard edged stuff. It can be filed and drilled and keeps a crisp edge.The next time I am going to try this: make empty bases on coins- make a gs push mold. Use black milliput to make a blank base cast. Let set. cut tab off feet leaving metal under foot as a peg. Dip pegs under feet in paint, press onto base then dremmel out the painted bits. Lot of work, but hopefully should let me get proper detailed bases without custom sculpting each.